This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Compact published a quite thorough analysis of the discrimination millennial white men have faced since the mid-2010s, focusing on the liberal arts and cultural sectors. It does a good job of illustrating the similar dynamics at play in fields including journalism, screenwriting, and academia, interviewing a number of men who found their careers either dead on arrival or stagnating due to their race and gender. It's a bit long, but quite normie-friendly, with plenty of stats to back up the personal anecdotes. It also does a good job of illustrating the generational dynamics at play, where older white men pulled the ladder up behind them, either for ideological reasons or as a defense mechanism to protect their own positions.
A great quote from near the end of the piece that sums it up:
Edit: typo
I was in a Ph.D program in 2014, hoping to go into academia, and I ended up dropping out because I could see that there was no way forward. I know it's a tournament profession and my odds were never good, but once I was inside it became apparent that it was in fact literally hopeless.
I ended up going into technology, because it was the only sufficiently merit-based thing I could find in which I could sort of force open the door. Even there, I think I got a senior role just in time, as I hear the entry level is very very bad these days. I've had conversations with my wife about what we might advise our future children to do with their lives, and I've mentally prepared to tell them that certain dreams are just impossible, and some things can only ever be a hobby for us - even though there are other people who will be able to dedicate their whole lives to them. Maybe it's been a good thing, in that I was forced to keep some things I love as just a hobby, and so I never got burnt out on them by trying to make them a career.
Yeah I had a similar path, wanted to go for a history PhD but all my professors told me it was hopeless as a white man. I also went into a tech startup, and we crushed it, then I got fired two weeks before my equity would've vested despite far surpassing all the goals in my initial contract.
I try to keep the light in my heart alive, stay focused on Christ, etc, but damn I am fucking angry. I have to say. I wish there was a more constructive movement to end this shit, very sad to see that so much of the dissident right is just pure vitriol.
There needs to be more vitriol. You can't just ask nicely not to be ethnically cleansed. The people you are up against have recently and openly learned they can just murder you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.
Vitriol is a start to what you need to do.
I am also of the vitriolic right, but IMO it behooves us to keep in mind that yours is the exact same rhetoric used by the left to valorize rioting negroes and palestinian combatants and all manner of domestic terrorism and social engineering.
"Our enemies are maximally evil and we must therefore maximize our aggression against them.", right or wrong, cements the conflict as absolute. It paints a glowing red target on you in the eyes of all who previously were only leery of you. It is exactly why the woke left has passed its peak and people are now waking up to the facts that no, western civilization wasn't a sexist racist theocracy and needn't have destroyed itself through mass immigration from the 3rd world, even as it is too late.
I'm not saying there's no conflict. I am myself strongly in favor of punishing my political enemies no matter what breaks in the process. But for anyone who still believes in saving, protecting or building anything - infinite vitriol is poison, and will destroy your cause.
Saving, protecting or building should only come after the enemy is defeated though, through vitriol and aggression. Otherwise they might destroy what you were building and protecting.
Ah yes, once the final victory has been won and the spectre of the enemy ideology is banished forever from the world. Once every actual enemy has been killed and every potential enemy lobotomized and all information pertaining to the enemy ideology has been scoured.
You know, it would be so inconvenient if the enemy were made of the same stuff as us, from the same peoples and families, and a straightforward victory weren't possible. Good thing the enemy is easily identifiable and irredeemable monsters who are completely separate from us.
Seriously though, what would a defeat of the enemy look like, to you?
I can name some examples now that you asked. For one, violent criminal “refugees” from the MENA region getting arrested and deported. Not being “ordered to be deported”, which is very obviously a BS measure intended to deceive NPCs, but getting deported i.e. physically removed. Or cutting aid to Ukraine. Or not suppressing the fact that COVID “vaccines” have caused a massive number of early deaths. Should any of those actually happen, I’d be saying that roughly 30% of the work is done.
Most of them have in fact made themselves easily visually identifiable already, through public statements and also forms of body modification typical of leftist 'spiteful mutants' (h/t to the Jolly Heretic).
Do you have solid sources backing up this claim?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
All that worked for them. It's still working for them. The woke left hasn't passed its peak; it's just currently in a tactical retreat. In 2028 the Democrats will have a trifecta and their woke vanguard will bring everything back on Day 1, because they have no scruples about the procedural and institutional barriers they use to stop their opponents. They'll "just do things" and there will be no Chicago judge to stop them, nor would they stop if they were told. And if there is resistance, the riot machine gets turned back on.
We'll see. Maybe in America. I expect some changes have already commenced that will manifest over the coming decades, and the political divides of those will not map cleanly to those of the past decades. Demographics remains destiny, and destiny is already happening. There will be a successor ideology to "woke", but it won't be the same - the causes the "woke" were married to are largely discredited in Europe, even as the old guard sticks to them. The young ones have seen them fail. Lockdowns, maximized mass immigration, feminism, tolerance, democracy. The generations growing up right now will find different causes, any alliances with old "woke" will be of convenience rather than conviction. And the biggest bloc of all in Europe will be Muslims - we'll see how that changes the political landscapes. At least that's my prediction.
So, back to America. Maybe it'll be as you say. Maybe a hot culture war or the ethnic cleansing of red-blooded Americans is inevitable. We'll see.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The guy who killed Charlie Kirk is suffering the consequences. He will likely be executed. What more do you want? Random innocent people to be punished as vengeance? People getting shot by random crazies is a fact of life in a free society, and the only person responsible is the killer.
That is very far-fetched.
More options
Context Copy link
Yes, the left traded a pawn for a knight or a bishop. Maybe even a queen. They don't seem too upset about that trade, and in the meantime they are winning elections, and their base is crying out for more political murders.
"Oh" you might say "But after Charlie Kirk was killed, thousands of chapters of Turning Point USA were founded!"
First, we'll see how that pans out, and second, the left decided they can murder those too.
Meanwhile almost every single popular conservative is afraid to appear in public because the left will murder them. The right has almost zero ground game because the left will murder them if they do.
It's a winning strategy, and I think we need more of it. Making journalist, judges, legislators and administrators fear for their life in public is a proven strategy.
This looks like fedposting. I get that it is mostly a criticism of the left for actually engaging in political violence, and I'm hoping that there is a degree of sarcasm in it. 3 day ban.
Last time (7 months ago) you got a short ban for something that looked like fedposting you insisted it wasn't fedposting. We gave you a light one day ban at the time. Back then I wrote this in the thread:
So to reiterate: do not fedpost. Do not jokingly fedpost. Do not look like you might be fedposting.
More options
Context Copy link
Can we please wait until there's at least a suspect in custody before using the Brown shooting to support your narrative?
More options
Context Copy link
There is no "strategy", it was one guy. If polemicists weren't taking security precautions for their public appearances until now, that's on them. Democrats had a Minnesota state rep shot and you don't hear us complaining about stochastic terrorism or whatever. That risk is part of being a public figure, especially in highly tense political times like we're in now.
Nah, there are some people explicitly and publically advocating more of this - Destiny's "you need conservatives to be afraid of getting killed when they go to events", for instance. I'd call that a strategy. It's not a strategy "the left" as a whole is pursuing, though (the Democratic Party certainly came out against it).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes but this sort of hate-fueled rhetoric is just inaccurate which turns a ton of people off. Democrats lawmakers/elites are not openly murdering conservatives, poorly adjusted criminals and depressed schizos are. I understand that there's a strong argument to be made that the Democratic governance LEADS to these murders, but you have to actually make that argument!!
When you say things like
This loses you the moral high ground, and the fight when it comes to normies. You're being taken in by your rage and making strategic mistakes. It's not just that it's factually wrong it's that it's a losing strategy.
I'd agree that OP is indeed incorrect. The corrected statement should be this: they can just advocate for murdering you, your children, and your representatives and suffer virtually no political consequences.
More options
Context Copy link
How so?
Have you read Howard Thurman? I think his brand of nonviolence and his take on the "hounds of Hell" might interest you.
More options
Context Copy link
Democrats have been almost pure delusional hate-fueled rhetoric for most of my adult life, intensifying into cancerous ferocity over the last decade, and it doesn't seem to have turned anyone off on general principles.
No, it seems like that's just media dominance and message control. If you refuse to ever tolerate or acknowledge validity of criticism of your own extremists, you apparently can just brazen out the moral high ground.
Trumpism, and Musk becoming pissed off enough to buy Twitter, seem the obvious examples. Well, no, the more relevant examples; the most obvious example, in context, is this board.
More options
Context Copy link
The rhetoric of pro-Israel politicians is a great example of this point. Randy Fine can talk about how beautiful it is to see dead babies and call for the extermination of Palestinian children all he wants and the DNC aren't even willing to mildly chastise him, let alone pass a condemnation of him like they did for Nick Fuentes.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Look up Jay Jones again.
You are point of fact wrong on every point.
Let me put that another way. Ten years ago everyone knew white males were being discriminated against. Say it then and people like you would accuse me of "giving into hate and losing the normies". Now that it's fait accompli, all the institutions have been lost, white family formation is in the toilet, and our country is lost, people are coming out of the woodwork admitting "Yeah, we did that shit". Articles like the above are allowed to be published. But it's too late, there is no reversing it.
And I'm sure in 10 years time, there will be another slate of late admissions "Yeah, we did permit the ethnic cleansing of white people. Oh well!". And when the actions required to make the survivors whole are proposed, people like you will once again wring their hands going "Woah, woah, that's too scary, you'll lose the normies!"
The normies need to be radicalized. And attempts must be made 24/7 to see that they are brought on board with saving themselves. If you are afraid of losing them, you are failing in your moral duty to save them.
This is way too defeatist my friend. While we yet draw breath there is hope. We absolutely can and will reverse this evil and corruption. Far mightier empires have fallen throughout history. It may seem impossible now, but things change gradually then all at once.
I've been seeing the normies get more and more radicalized my entire life. I think we're on a good trajectory.
There is nothing actionable here.
The normies have indeed become more radicalized. For the left, as we saw in the Great Awokening of 2020. Every once in a while they get a good look at their destination (e.g. Sam Brinton transing their kids) and recoil, but then they go right back. And the "adults" on the right preach doing nothing, and when the more action-oriented on the right start acting, said "adults" are more horrified by them than by their leftist counterparts.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Just a reminder that whites have the stablest TFR in the US, it's actually slightly ahead of the black TFR, that US immigration is more white than black, and that whites of any age are the most likely to be married. Your blackpill on white people is not true, although white demographic decline is still likely.
Are you sure about that?
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
You're not wrong, but what use is it to have a bunch of radicalized red tribers if there is no plan for them to fight back? As far as I can tell, the "The Republican Party is Doomed" article still holds true today. Without control of any important institutions, there's not a lot you can do.
You can always destroy those institutions instead of trying to control them. Those can be rebuilt later according to different designs.
More options
Context Copy link
"The Republican Party is Doomed" is still written by a man that conflates certification with education with job security with meaningful skills, and who today has yet to confront or recognize a very simple flaw downstream of what that means:
I don't think you can avoid plans happening, as people get radicalized, as someone who has even an inkling of what that could looks like, and very many good reasons to wish it wouldn't happen.
More seriously, there's a lot of options radicals have, many of which do not require vast planning or coordination, only common knowledge.
Some of those options aren't bad. If, as a completely random example, the left will be murdering political enemies with impunity or the police and prosecutors will just look the other way when someone on the right gets his or her face punched in... well, I was on team Pink Pistols when gay guys getting bashed was a non-zero risk. I'm not abandoning that because some people insist it'd be better if I were beaten than their brownshits shot, and if they've never said the name "Paul Kessler", I'm not going to even care. There's a functional moral and legal principle, here.
But the majority of options are bad, and they're still going to happen. There's some subtle stuff, like what happens when we it becomes common knowledge the Civil Rights Act doesn't and hasn't realled since its inception, and every jury the least competent lawyer in a red or purple state can manage will nullo your prosecutions, and any lawyer slightly above that Platkins out any attempt to Uno Reverso by getting jurisdiction in a blue state first.
And then there's an actual horror stories.
Remember Malheur? Two years ago, if it happened again, common knowledge had already become that people committing actual terrorist arson against federal police didn't get a 'mandatory' terrorism enhancement. Today, there is basically nothing the nuBundies could say that would cost them political support, and until and unless they literally shot -- not shot at -- federal officers, they'd still have behaved better than anti-ICE groups. That includes literally dropping heavy rocks onto the front windshields of fast-moving cars and people, or running for a national office with a nazi tattoo.
But don't worry, without a college diploma, Red Tribers won't drop rocks. That's a fancy-boy edujumacated physics problem. Electricians, machinists, plumbers, gun nuts, maintenance employees, firefights, construction workers, no possible relevant domain expertise. or at least none I'm willing to discuss publicly
Remember when FEMA decided that they weren't going to provide support to houses with Trump political signs? Ah, without the proper cred-en-tialis there's no way some Red Triber would end up walking door to door or considering neighborhoods dangerous based on matters tangentially related to politics. They'll just be a ton of people doing work requiring hands-on expertise, to serve people they hate and know hate them, with ready and long awareness of normal and subtle failure modes. No way they might be in evacuated neighborhoods before most residents return, with easy arguments to defend any place they could be at all.
Remember some of the California trans sanctuary laws? What do you think happens when the mainstream news reports a father just now kidnapping his son, the federal marshals heroically rip a long-pregnant early teenager from their parent's arms the next week, and no one can talk about what the kid's current gender presentation or who assaulted him to start with? Do you think there's anyone who can argue Loudon County a success case for gradual stepwise moderation? Do you think people need a medical doctorate to notice the difference between a week and twenty-one weeks? A historian's degree find every single person with their name on public record for those orders?
These don't require a plan. Many of them don't even require explicit coordination beyond listening to the news, sometimes even only listening to news reporters biased against them. They're not even indicia I think are particularly likely -- since I don't want this to happen, I'm not going to meme my way into disaster.
But think for five minutes, hard, about what thirty unrelated bad actors might individually want to do, just repeating the greatest hits of the last five years.
Then consider how much post-Civil Rights Act civility may have depended on how difficult it was to ensure an attack would hit the 'guilty' and not hit the 'innocent' -- as the charcoal briquettes rant highlighted, the Oklahoma City Bomber very specifically choose to burn children to death among others -- and what signal hearing "Kirk deserved it" jokes and 'jokes' from their neighbors have sent.
I would like it to not be this way. I don't see many people actually arguing it isn't. Only that it shouldn't be.
I’m sorry, but I can’t help but think this is over-optimistic nonsense.
“Plans” will happen, sure. Lots of stupid, counterproductive “plans” by idiotic “lone-wolf” actors — a large fraction probably egged on and guided by undercover Feds into the least effective courses possible.
Not effective ones. This is an illusion created by the apparent effectiveness of left-wing supposed “lone-wolf” radicals. who are really just the visible end of a vast, less visible organized apparatus — read David Hines, or Curtis Yarvin.
Sure, you can say “better to be judged by twelve that carried by six” or such, but when the choices are:
Take a beating from the “brownshirts,” and maybe get crippled or killed, or
Shoot one or more of them… and get tried in Federal court for murder and “hate crimes,” inevitably convicted and sent to Federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for, if not life, then decades; where the guards, having been informed that you’re an evil racist homophobic transphobic white supremacist Nazi Klansman who should die behind bars, pass this on to every non-white gang in the prison, at which point you eventually end up getting shanked to death if you’re lucky, but more likely cornered, repeatedly violated, and then beaten to death (just like you were trying to avoid to begin with); all while the guards look the other way.
How many people do you think will really pick option 2?
Mostly when the state allows them to happen, because it’s convenient to let them happen as an excuse to crack down further.
This is unintelligible. Beyond the grammar errors — “when we it becomes”? — I have no idea what this means.
And that “political support” is useless.
It doesn’t matter how much right-wing radicals have “behaved better than” various leftist groups, because what decides punishment is not the level of “bad behavior,” but “who, whom?” Quod licet Jovi, non licet bovi, as the Romans said.
Left-wingers can drop rocks. Red-tribers can’t and won’t, not because it’s “a fancy-boy edujumacated physics problem,” but because they’ll be destroyed if they try. They won’t get away with it like the other side does. Anyone on the right who so much as tries will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Their “associates” — their friends and family — could be prosecuted too; or failing that, cancelled, fired, blacklisted, debanked, attacked by “brownshirts,” burned out of their homes, etc.
If your “people doing work requiring hands-on expertise” try anything, they’ll be caught by the omnipresent surveillance we live under, and completely crushed by the invincible Leviathan of the state.
I’m not clear on the scenario you’re vaguely gesturing toward here, but the answer to “what do you think happens?” is “nothing,” because nothing ever happens. Red tribes grumble, and mutter “somebody aught to…” and “next time, we’ll…” and then roll over and take it. I’ve watched my parents, my friends, my neighbors do exactly this my entire life.
What difference does any of this make?
First, there’s what these bad actors might want to do, and then there’s the separate question of whether they’ll actually try to do it. Very unlikely, I say. Too comfortable, too much to lose — and smart enough to see that their odds of getting away with it are too low. Then, even if they try, there’s the odds they get away with it. Which, again, one can see are abysmally low.
It’s not “right-wingers are too stupid and lack the edujumacation and proper cred-en-tials to strike back” — it’s that we’re too weak and disorganized, and the enemy too strong and organized, for any of this sort of thing to ever work (that is, at anything but being counterproductive).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
There was no plan, and Charlie Kirk is still dead, the power he wielded in life shattered into a thousand pieces and scattered to the four winds.
You can make a pretty big impact without a "plan".
You can if you you have the tacit, hidden backing of a vast, powerful, organized apparatus behind you. If you don't have that, though…
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link